Until this month, "imprecatory prayer" was not in many people's vocabularies.

But then the Rev. Wiley Drake, pastor of First Baptist Church of Buena Park, Calif., urged his supporters to use Psalm 109 to focus prayers directed at the "enemies of God" - including the leaders of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Drake was urging the use of imprecatory prayer - prayers for another's misfortune or for vengeance against God's enemies. Now such prayer is the talk of blogs and letters to the editor.

The controversy flared Aug. 14, the day the Washington, D.C.-based church-state group asked the Internal Revenue Service to probe the tax- exempt status of Drake's congregation.

Churches, as tax-exempt, are prohibited from campaigning for candidates. Drake earlier had issued a statement on church letterhead endorsing former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican presidential candidate.

Drake told his supporters that he attempted to talk to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State about the issue. He cited a verse from the Gospel of Matthew that says, "If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you."

Drake said his efforts were rebuffed.

"Now that all efforts have been exhausted, we must begin our Imprecatory Prayer, at the key points of the parliamentary role in the earth where we live," Drake wrote.

Under the heading, "HOW TO PRAY," he listed all 31 verses of Psalm 109, in which King David appeals to divine justice. Drake provided his congregation the King James Version of the psalm, including Verse 9, which says: "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow." On the advice of his attorneys, Drake has declined to be interviewed.

Experts in Scripture say it's easy to misread David's intentions and the purpose of imprecatory prayer in general.

There must be a distinction between one's personal enemies and the enemies of God, said Sister Thomas Bernard MacConnell, founder of the Spirituality Center at Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles and a veteran teacher of spiritual direction.

"It is very possible that my enemies are not God's enemies," she said.

Referring to Drake's targets, she added, "Who is to say that those people are God's enemies?"

The Rev. Kurt Fredrickson, who directs doctoral programs for 700 working pastors from around the world at Fuller Theological Seminary, said imprecatory prayers are atypical.

"They are more of a window into the sinfulness of human beings," said Fredrickson, an assistant professor of pastoral ministry at the Pasadena, Calif., school. "Normally when we think about praying, we're thinking about prayers of adoration, prayers of confession, prayers for someone we're concerned about who is sick or going through a hard time, or those sort of prayers for ourselves - not the sort of vindictive, revengeful statements. These prayers are contrary to the way of Jesus."

The Rev. John Goldingay, a professor of the Old Testament at Fuller, said one value of imprecatory prayer is that it asks God to take action - not for humans to take matters into their own hands.

No equivalent in Islam, other religions

Other faiths take varying views of such prayers.

Imam Ali Siddiqui of the Islamic Society of Corona/ Norco in Corona, Calif., said there was no tradition of imprecatory prayer in Islam. But there is a prayer in which the believer asks Allah to "liberate me from people who are trying to hurt me," Siddiqui said.

He told a story about the Prophet Muhammad that embodies the opposite of imprecatory prayer: A woman used to throw trash at the prophet. Once she did not come to abuse him, so Muhammad inquired about her. Upon learning that she was ill, he went to see her and prayed for her well-being.

Rabbi Stephen Julius Stein of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles said the kind of prayer called by Drake is not "normative" in Jewish tradition.

"We ask God certainly to do justice and to bring those who are errant to justice, but what I would consider an imprecatory prayer is not normative in Judaism," he said.

The Rev. Dickson Yagi, a Southern Baptist pastor and an expert on Buddhism, said that in some streams of esoteric Buddhism, such as Shingon and Tendai, adherents perform a fire ritual as the main worship.

Putting on his Christian hat and returning to the raw language of Psalm 109, Yagi said his denomination has no tradition of using prayer to curse anyone.

"This would be quite shocking to all Southern Baptists," he said.

"In the New Testament, Jesus Christ comes and says, 'Forgive your enemies, pray for your enemies, love your enemies,' " Yagi said. "This idea of enemies has really changed in the New Testament. We cannot do those things, because Jesus Christ taught us to forgive our enemies, love our enemies, pray for our enemies, and he died for his enemies."